Human factors and systems in emergency departments.

摘要

Emergency departments are clinical areas in which patient flow and activity are, by definition, unpredictable. Working in this environment is therefore challenging, with staff required to multitask while making complex, time critical decisions, often with a multidisciplinary team that changes at the end of, or even during, each shift. This is compounded by the information available to staff being commonly incomplete and dynamic. The impact of uncontrolled error can be catastrophic [1,2]. Although managing the workflow in this environment requires clinical skills, perhaps, more importantly, it requires nonclinical skills. Emergency medicine has rightly focussed on ensuring that the emergency physicians of the future are equipped with appropriate clinical skills. Consideration needs to be given to ensuring that the speciality as a whole also has the requisite nonclinical skills.